He walked, as usual, with his hands in his pockets. He walked so far that his feet began to hurt him. He wondered why he had set out to begin with. He stopped and looked around. The cityscape was unremarkable as always. The strangers passing paid him no mind and indeed there was little about them to draw his attention their way.

He no longer had the energy to experiment with psychoenergetics. The experiments that had seemed so promising -- the altering of the ph of a gram of matter from miles away by mindpower alone -- meant little in the daily urban toil. Though the experiments had brought him the power and prestige for which he'd lusted so long, the results were entirely confined to the laboratory.

Ahead of him, beside a wall, a boy was playing a pipe. The music was anything but professional, not worth the pennies laying in the cup. Stevens disliked beggars. He moved suddenly, possessed of an urgent desire to be across the street.

He hadn't seen the newbus coming. Its quiet hum had been obscured by the noise.

Stevens didnt die immediately. He looked out for a moment on a giant and appalling vista of vectoring death on which he himself was like a single, extending ear receiving the eternal, cacophonic piping from which he would never now escape.